Deputy Minister and Millions in Her Hands: Ella Slepyan’s Mysterious Career in Zaporizhia

Ella Slepyan, Deputy Mayor of Zaporizhzhia, has extensive experience in government structures.

Slepyan has held various positions in the Zaporizhzhia City Council, the State Property Fund Representative Office, and the Zaporizhzhia Regional Administration. During her career, she has held such important positions as Deputy Director of the Department of Communal Property of the City Council (2013–2014), Director of the Department of Economic Development and Trade of the ZODA (2015–2016), and Deputy Head of the State Fiscal Service in Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv regions (2016–2017).

From 2019 to 2022, Slepyan served as Deputy Director of Teplo-Melitopol. In 2020, she ran for mayor of Zaporizhzhia as a Nash Krai candidate, but received only 1.9% of the vote. The restoration of ties with state structures occurred in 2024, when Regina Kharchenko became the secretary of the Zaporizhzhia City Council, and Slepyan joined the team of deputies.

In the declarations, Slepyan draws attention to herself by the lack of information about her family members. She filed her first declaration in 2016, indicating two apartments in Zaporizhzhia, purchased in 1997, and a 2008 Honda CR-V. She did not declare any savings.

Slepyan noted the sale of one of the apartments in 2016 for 503 thousand hryvnias, and in subsequent declarations, this amount appeared as savings. Significant changes in her property situation were recorded in 2018, when, while serving as deputy head of the ZODA, she declared 510 thousand hryvnias in cash and 9 thousand dollars. At the time of her retirement from civil service in 2019, her savings amounted to 600 thousand hryvnias and 25 thousand dollars.

The latest declaration filed by Slepyan in her capacity as deputy mayor of Zaporizhzhia lists an apartment in the city and a 2020 Volkswagen Tiguan, worth 1.3 million hryvnias. During her year of work in the city council, her salary was 772 thousand hryvnias. She had 119 thousand hryvnias and 1.7 thousand euros in banks, and 1.2 million hryvnias and 120 thousand dollars in cash.